R.I.P. Trish Keenan

Steve Drew

Keenan performing with Broadcast

​Trish Keenan, lead singer of the influential electronic-psych band Broadcast, passed away this morning from severe complications from pneumonia. She was 42.

Several news outlets reported recently that the singer had contracted the H1N1 virus and had been battling it for two weeks in intensive care.



Keenan's work with Broadcast began in the late 1990s with several Stereolab- and Serge Gainsbourg-influenced singles and compilation cuts. The band later signed to Warp Records and released three critically-acclaimed albums over the course of the last decade, beginning with 2000's The Noise Made by People. The band's postmodern chamber music gradually became more and more abrasive over the course of its career, culminating in 2005's buzzy Tender Buttons, which Keenan made as only a duo with bassist James Cargill.



Keenan's most recently-released work was the Focus Group's Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age EP in 2009, a collaboration with experimental musician Julian House. Her work is best known for her sad, dreamy vocals, which simultaneously evoke 1960s lounge music and 1990s lo-fi and shoegaze. Songs such as "Come On Let's Go" blended her stark, torch-song presence into soundtrack-like textures that led to critical adulation from Pitchfork and other outlets. Keenan's style and influence can be felt on recently beloved albums by Beach House, Bat for Lashes and the XX, as well as in the work of experimental techno-theatrical fringe figures like Xiu Xiu and CocoRosie.



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